Great things take time, and email marketing campaigns are no exception. Successful transitions from marketing to sales involve giving your leads some care. Easier said than done, so let us break it down.

Nurturing your leads: it is all about perspective

We discussed leads in part one, and these are what you will be working with carefully from this point forward. Not all leads are created equal, but all have equal potential. Overestimating or discrediting leads based on assumptions is dangerous. For small businesses, lead generation can be a daunting task, and after finally accumulating a hefty list, it may be tempting to jump to conclusions, either rushing the sales process or dismissing some leads as unworthy. A large share of B2B marketers have never established nurturing strategies, and this tendency toward presumption is probably why.

Leads that seem cold at first could heat up in three to six months with carefully catered strategies. None should be tossed aside. Instead, view each one as a seed of intrinsic value that you can nurture into a sales-ready lead. There is no set limit to the sales potential of your existing contact list, regardless of your assumptions. If you take the time to build relationships, you could convert even the most distant lead into a loyal client. It may feel like a waste of time in some cases, but overcoming that assumption could be what sets you apart from the other businesses cluttering this contact's inbox.

Segmenting your email marketing campaign

Blasting the same general message to everyone on your list will not make them comfortable with you. It will alienate you as a faceless sender with no concern for its clients. Studies show that most leads are not sales-ready. How do you make someone you barely know feel special? Start by considering the small amount you do know about them and identifying their differences. These variations could be in industry, target market, specific needs, or history. How did they sign up? Have they taken any actions since they opted in? Even a lack of action tells you something unique about the lead. This information lays the foundation for your segmented campaigns.

With segmented groups, even if the basic content of your emails is the same, the framework of each segment's emails can be personalized with slight modifications to subject lines and introductions. This way you effectively show your array of leads that you care about their individual needs.

To consistently nurture your leads, you will need a stable backlog of content to draw from regularly, whether once a month, twice a month, or once a week. These frequencies depend on the nature of your business and the stage of each relationship. But what if you want to get started now? There are plenty of ways to repurpose existing content while you build new material.

Quality content can be found in many places

  • Customer reviews, test-group findings, and successful reports
  • Updates and news about your company
  • Special offers, giveaways and promotions
  • Social media influencers' posts
  • Others' publications on why your product or service is necessary for success
  • Others' relevant podcasts, articles and videos your audience will find useful

Nurture leads by repurposing existing content

  • Divide existing publications, such as whitepapers, into smaller sections and send them individually across separate emails
  • Record live events and use the videos as content
  • Transcribe events into written content for blog posts
  • Respond to online influencers
  • Summarize other relevant blog posts and link back to them
  • Create infographic representations of existing content

Further down the road, monitor your leads' behaviors, including open rates, click-throughs, and whitepaper and webinar downloads. This steady flow of quality, useful content between "welcome" and "buy now" bridges the distance between a cold lead and a relationship of familiarity and trust. If you take the time both creating content and distributing it, your nurture campaign will flow naturally.